That's not the reason there wasn't security at the Benghazi annex. That was a tactical decision by State because they didn't want it to appear we didn't trust our "allies" in Libya. Prior to the Benghazi attack, the general feeling was that the jihadi militias were on our side since we had just helped them overthrow Qaddafi. Furthermore, we were using similar jihadis as part of Presidential Directive 11 in Syria for the same intended effect (regime change). In fact, that was what Ambassador Stevens and the Turkish delegation had just met about - the transfer of weapons from Libya to Syria to overthrow Assad.
So tell me then, why was the US diplomatic/CIA annex attacked?
Who attacked them?
What was the attackers' relationship with the US prior to the attack?
Who did Ambassador Stevens meet with just prior to the attack?
Why was this group not attacked?
These are real, pertinent questions that were never answered by the Obama administration or covered by the mainstream media - or for that matter, delved into deeply by the various Congressional investigations conducted by Republicans because many of them were aware and knew the answers behind those questions and they aren't answers that would go over well with the American people.
Fox News didn't cover Pizzagate at all. That was all reddit/T_D, reddit/pizzagate, and VOAT. And if you defending Comet Ping Pong Pizza and James Alefantis, you have issues.
One alt-reicher ran over a girl with a fucking car (incidentally, she died of a heart attack, not from injuries sustained from the car hitting her). Incidentally, one Bernista shot up a Congressional baseball practice and intentionally targeted Republican congressmen. It's pretty interesting comparing the levels of outrage from the two different events.
Most of what you think of as "thinking" is really just retrieving things from cache.
I'm in the middle of the road when it comes to predicting "when" we get AGI - sooner than skeptics think but further away than people like Kurzweil think. But I do think it will be the end of humanity when it does happen. Best, best case scenario is the well treated pet scenario.
It's less why companies should stay out of politics and more why companies should play on both sides of the fence.
Staying out of politics opens up opportunities for your competitors to lobby for legislation that directly targets you as a business, or to set up government funded litigation attacks like what happened to Microsoft earlier. Microsoft went from not donating any money to politics to being one of the bigger donors overnight because of that.
>Let's hear it then. [...] When my mum starts talking Bitcoin then I'll get more cautious about saturation
Let's talk about your mum. What would be the motivation for your mum to get involved in crypto currencies? It's a rhetorical question. Here's the reality (as I see it, which may be flawed). There are some core constituent users of Bitcoins that represent non-speculative demand:
- early adopters like the anti-central bank people that do it because they don't like fiat currencies, supporting the man, the Federal reserve, etc
- people operating in the black market or grey market for goods and services that may be frowned upon by the legal authorities.
- local and international money transfers
- people who live in hyper inflationary countries like Venezuela where they need something other than the Bolivar or the Zimbabwe dollar to store wealth in a currency/money like vehicle.
The reality is, outside of speculation, Bitcoin doesn't offer any material advantages over existing currencies or currency analogues (e.g., credit cards) for most people. It's harder to use, fewer vendors accept them, it takes 10-15 minutes on average for the first transfer confirmation, and longer for a complete resolution (granted, this is a Bitcoin issue rather than a overall CC issue). But, speculation - which is the root of all bubbles, is a hell of a draw to Bitcoin. If I had invested $1000 in 10 cent US dimes in 2010, I would have, in real value terms, lost about 12% of my assets in terms of purchasing power. Whereas if I had bought 4,000 Bitcoins instead, I would be a millionaire several times over.
When you tell me things like BCC has doubled in price since your last post, you aren't speaking to the utility of BCC as anything other than a speculation vehicle - and you may be right and I might be wrong about the inherent underlying value of CC overall - a lot of our respective opinions I think are based on what our guestimate is on the potential network size of CC combined with (any) uncertainty around government action / repression / taxation. For example, let's say I fix the "real" value of BC at around $500 based on my estimate of the potential network size. If I'm off by a order of magnitude - that justifies (ball park), the current valuation. If I'm off by two orders of magnitude - it means it could be worth $50,000 per BC. But it's all speculative, and the collapsing function will be time.
Now, on to the tech bubble or why it isn't a bubble (even though it was). The reality is technology has made our lives dramatically different (if not better) over the last 2 decades and dramatically changed the way we interact, shop, and work. There were and are bubble aspects to valuations, but companies that were fundamentally sound (like Amazon, for example) didn't collapse back to nothing when the tech bubble "popped". There is an inherent risk of CC popping back to close to nothing (relative to their current valuations) depending on what happens in the next couple of years or so.
>Like Real Estate and the Tech Boom etc. Oh wait...
I can make a pretty decent argument why the tech boom isn't a bubble. Likewise, I can make a decent argument why blockchain currencies aren't valueless. But I can also make a pretty decent argument why blockchain currencies are probably overvalued and being pushed to unsustainable levels by speculation. FWIW, I hope you get rich/stay rich off of your investment. It's not personal, it's just my personal opinion and I could be wrong.
>Some people act like when a bubble bursts you are left with nothing.
>Don't let something new and revolutionary pass you up just because your to proud to admit you weren't the first to see it coming.
I'm not too proud. I missed the BC train. I wish I had bought in (or used my graphics cards to mine them) back when they were 25 cents a BC. Or bought in when they were $300 a BC. I had a friend that bought a bunch of steaks with his mined BC back when they were around 10 cents per BC. Shit happens. I missed on Apple too.
Look at the bright side, if I did buy into BC, it would be the top signal, and it would come crashing down. Me refraining from buying in is keeping your gains safe.
>By that logic everything that's gaining value, but might eventually lose value is in a "bubble". Cool. The term "bubble" is now meaningless.
No, by that logic everything that's gaining value mostly by speculation is a bubble. Given that higher liquidity options exist for blockchain transfers, what apart from speculation do you think is driving the dramatic price/value increase in Bitcoin over the past year?
Longer answer - it's a thesis premised on the fact that a lot of people are buying Bitcoin out of speculation, which is driving up demand and price, but isn't based on any underlying transactional demand (e.g., preferring to use BC for transactions over cash or credit cards) or as some other sort of vehicle (e.g., safe store of value in places like Venezuela where inflation is rampant).
>At present, though, I think the radical right is the bigger threat.
No, the radical right is not a bigger threat.
The radical left can put tens of thousands of people on the street at a moment's notice. They routinely disrupt the free speech of others, up to and including violence.
The last two mass casualty shootings (Sutherland, TX and Las Vegas) were by a militant atheist (Sutherland) and a registered Democrat (Las Vegas). The shooting at the Republican Congressional softball practice - done by a Bernie Bro. Rand Paul - attacked and had 5 ribs broken by an anti-Trump neighbor. 5 Dallas cops killed by a BLM member.
Contrast that with the far right's ability to assemble, maybe, 300 people at a rally wearing Polo shirts.
>Why were my genitals not mutilated at birth? Because my parents were hippies!
Yep, that must be why. Never mind that I'm not a hippy and am quite conservative (despite being atheist) and I didn't mutilate my kid's genitals at birth.
I honestly don't know. I would say north of $500 and south of $1500 but a lot of the value is contingent on things outside my planning horizon and knowledge. For example, Bitcoin has real and significant value to fairly normal people in Venezuela or similar situations. If Venezuela stabilizes their political and economic situation (and the hyperinflation), then the legitimate demand for BCs in Venezuela will go down, and the value as well. Likewise increasing currency instability and devaluation in other countries could lead to even more demand for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin at this point is like any other fiat currency, except it's not state backed: It's value is propped up by people's belief that it can be used as a store of value and a medium of exchange. In some areas (e.g., Venezuela), it fits the ideal characteristics of "money" better than the Bolivar does.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
Just because the price of Bitcoin keeps rising does not mean it's not a bubble. Literally every other bubble has the same evangelists spouting off the various reasons why it's not a bubble and why this time it's different.
The argument that the recent meteoric rise in Bitcoin is due to a herd speculators rather than demand for Bitcoin currency as a currency vehicle is probably the correct one. And if there's one thing that herds do is stampede. Sooner or later, they are going to stampede for the exit and your $7,000 bitcoin is going to plummet back to somewhere near what the true transactional and holding value of BC is.
>We don't have computers that can think yet. We just don't. We aren't even CLOSE, and it may not be possible at all.
We don't even know how we "think". ANNs are just an approximation - if and when computers start to think, we will be poorly positioned right now to evaluate that.
My dog got out from the fence a couple of days after moving into a new house. Next door neighbor saw a post about it on NextDoor and texted me the the link. She was not in my address book. I was not in her address book. On the basis of one text, Facebook recommended her as a friend a few hours later.
>Speed of deployment usually isn't worth sacrificing correctness, performance, maintainability and security, if the choice is one or the other.
That statement is completely conditional. There are lots of situations where there is a significant first mover advantage in getting a product out early.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not the reason there wasn't security at the Benghazi annex. That was a tactical decision by State because they didn't want it to appear we didn't trust our "allies" in Libya. Prior to the Benghazi attack, the general feeling was that the jihadi militias were on our side since we had just helped them overthrow Qaddafi. Furthermore, we were using similar jihadis as part of Presidential Directive 11 in Syria for the same intended effect (regime change). In fact, that was what Ambassador Stevens and the Turkish delegation had just met about - the transfer of weapons from Libya to Syria to overthrow Assad.
So tell me then, why was the US diplomatic/CIA annex attacked?
Who attacked them?
What was the attackers' relationship with the US prior to the attack?
Who did Ambassador Stevens meet with just prior to the attack?
Why was this group not attacked?
These are real, pertinent questions that were never answered by the Obama administration or covered by the mainstream media - or for that matter, delved into deeply by the various Congressional investigations conducted by Republicans because many of them were aware and knew the answers behind those questions and they aren't answers that would go over well with the American people.
Fox News didn't cover Pizzagate at all. That was all reddit/T_D, reddit/pizzagate, and VOAT. And if you defending Comet Ping Pong Pizza and James Alefantis, you have issues.
>The only thing that bothered me is I never thought that in the divorce the liberals would get the NFL.
That's just the NFL committing suicide under Roger Goodell.
>The famine of 1966 killed only 2 million
Let that sink in folks, Communists view 2 million deaths as no big deal.
One alt-reicher ran over a girl with a fucking car (incidentally, she died of a heart attack, not from injuries sustained from the car hitting her). Incidentally, one Bernista shot up a Congressional baseball practice and intentionally targeted Republican congressmen. It's pretty interesting comparing the levels of outrage from the two different events.
Schwarzenegger is not conservative by any decent definition. Willis isn't really political at all. Reagan is dead.
Sounds like we are in violent agreement.
Most of what you think of as "thinking" is really just retrieving things from cache.
I'm in the middle of the road when it comes to predicting "when" we get AGI - sooner than skeptics think but further away than people like Kurzweil think. But I do think it will be the end of humanity when it does happen. Best, best case scenario is the well treated pet scenario.
>That's a reflection upon you if you think Bernie Sanders is middle of the road.
Most folks, particularly folks on the left, typically define the "center" as sitting right about where they are politically speaking.
It's less why companies should stay out of politics and more why companies should play on both sides of the fence.
Staying out of politics opens up opportunities for your competitors to lobby for legislation that directly targets you as a business, or to set up government funded litigation attacks like what happened to Microsoft earlier. Microsoft went from not donating any money to politics to being one of the bigger donors overnight because of that.
>Let's hear it then. [...] When my mum starts talking Bitcoin then I'll get more cautious about saturation
Let's talk about your mum. What would be the motivation for your mum to get involved in crypto currencies? It's a rhetorical question. Here's the reality (as I see it, which may be flawed). There are some core constituent users of Bitcoins that represent non-speculative demand:
- early adopters like the anti-central bank people that do it because they don't like fiat currencies, supporting the man, the Federal reserve, etc
- people operating in the black market or grey market for goods and services that may be frowned upon by the legal authorities.
- local and international money transfers
- people who live in hyper inflationary countries like Venezuela where they need something other than the Bolivar or the Zimbabwe dollar to store wealth in a currency/money like vehicle.
The reality is, outside of speculation, Bitcoin doesn't offer any material advantages over existing currencies or currency analogues (e.g., credit cards) for most people. It's harder to use, fewer vendors accept them, it takes 10-15 minutes on average for the first transfer confirmation, and longer for a complete resolution (granted, this is a Bitcoin issue rather than a overall CC issue). But, speculation - which is the root of all bubbles, is a hell of a draw to Bitcoin. If I had invested $1000 in 10 cent US dimes in 2010, I would have, in real value terms, lost about 12% of my assets in terms of purchasing power. Whereas if I had bought 4,000 Bitcoins instead, I would be a millionaire several times over.
When you tell me things like BCC has doubled in price since your last post, you aren't speaking to the utility of BCC as anything other than a speculation vehicle - and you may be right and I might be wrong about the inherent underlying value of CC overall - a lot of our respective opinions I think are based on what our guestimate is on the potential network size of CC combined with (any) uncertainty around government action / repression / taxation. For example, let's say I fix the "real" value of BC at around $500 based on my estimate of the potential network size. If I'm off by a order of magnitude - that justifies (ball park), the current valuation. If I'm off by two orders of magnitude - it means it could be worth $50,000 per BC. But it's all speculative, and the collapsing function will be time.
Now, on to the tech bubble or why it isn't a bubble (even though it was). The reality is technology has made our lives dramatically different (if not better) over the last 2 decades and dramatically changed the way we interact, shop, and work. There were and are bubble aspects to valuations, but companies that were fundamentally sound (like Amazon, for example) didn't collapse back to nothing when the tech bubble "popped". There is an inherent risk of CC popping back to close to nothing (relative to their current valuations) depending on what happens in the next couple of years or so.
>Like Real Estate and the Tech Boom etc. Oh wait...
I can make a pretty decent argument why the tech boom isn't a bubble. Likewise, I can make a decent argument why blockchain currencies aren't valueless. But I can also make a pretty decent argument why blockchain currencies are probably overvalued and being pushed to unsustainable levels by speculation. FWIW, I hope you get rich/stay rich off of your investment. It's not personal, it's just my personal opinion and I could be wrong.
>Some people act like when a bubble bursts you are left with nothing.
>Don't let something new and revolutionary pass you up just because your to proud to admit you weren't the first to see it coming.
I'm not too proud. I missed the BC train. I wish I had bought in (or used my graphics cards to mine them) back when they were 25 cents a BC. Or bought in when they were $300 a BC. I had a friend that bought a bunch of steaks with his mined BC back when they were around 10 cents per BC. Shit happens. I missed on Apple too.
Look at the bright side, if I did buy into BC, it would be the top signal, and it would come crashing down. Me refraining from buying in is keeping your gains safe.
>By that logic everything that's gaining value, but might eventually lose value is in a "bubble". Cool. The term "bubble" is now meaningless.
No, by that logic everything that's gaining value mostly by speculation is a bubble. Given that higher liquidity options exist for blockchain transfers, what apart from speculation do you think is driving the dramatic price/value increase in Bitcoin over the past year?
Short answer: I don't.
Longer answer - it's a thesis premised on the fact that a lot of people are buying Bitcoin out of speculation, which is driving up demand and price, but isn't based on any underlying transactional demand (e.g., preferring to use BC for transactions over cash or credit cards) or as some other sort of vehicle (e.g., safe store of value in places like Venezuela where inflation is rampant).
>At present, though, I think the radical right is the bigger threat.
No, the radical right is not a bigger threat.
The radical left can put tens of thousands of people on the street at a moment's notice. They routinely disrupt the free speech of others, up to and including violence.
The last two mass casualty shootings (Sutherland, TX and Las Vegas) were by a militant atheist (Sutherland) and a registered Democrat (Las Vegas). The shooting at the Republican Congressional softball practice - done by a Bernie Bro. Rand Paul - attacked and had 5 ribs broken by an anti-Trump neighbor. 5 Dallas cops killed by a BLM member.
Contrast that with the far right's ability to assemble, maybe, 300 people at a rally wearing Polo shirts.
>Why were my genitals not mutilated at birth? Because my parents were hippies!
Yep, that must be why. Never mind that I'm not a hippy and am quite conservative (despite being atheist) and I didn't mutilate my kid's genitals at birth.
>Which is?
I honestly don't know. I would say north of $500 and south of $1500 but a lot of the value is contingent on things outside my planning horizon and knowledge. For example, Bitcoin has real and significant value to fairly normal people in Venezuela or similar situations. If Venezuela stabilizes their political and economic situation (and the hyperinflation), then the legitimate demand for BCs in Venezuela will go down, and the value as well. Likewise increasing currency instability and devaluation in other countries could lead to even more demand for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin at this point is like any other fiat currency, except it's not state backed: It's value is propped up by people's belief that it can be used as a store of value and a medium of exchange. In some areas (e.g., Venezuela), it fits the ideal characteristics of "money" better than the Bolivar does.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
Just because the price of Bitcoin keeps rising does not mean it's not a bubble. Literally every other bubble has the same evangelists spouting off the various reasons why it's not a bubble and why this time it's different.
The argument that the recent meteoric rise in Bitcoin is due to a herd speculators rather than demand for Bitcoin currency as a currency vehicle is probably the correct one. And if there's one thing that herds do is stampede. Sooner or later, they are going to stampede for the exit and your $7,000 bitcoin is going to plummet back to somewhere near what the true transactional and holding value of BC is.
>We don't have computers that can think yet. We just don't. We aren't even CLOSE, and it may not be possible at all. We don't even know how we "think". ANNs are just an approximation - if and when computers start to think, we will be poorly positioned right now to evaluate that.
>I am sure Mark Zuckerberg had no idea his creation would be used by a foreign power to influence a U.S. election when he created Facebook.
LOL. You know this is complete bullshit, right?
No, people will become pets quite willingly.
They do it with texts as well.
My dog got out from the fence a couple of days after moving into a new house. Next door neighbor saw a post about it on NextDoor and texted me the the link. She was not in my address book. I was not in her address book. On the basis of one text, Facebook recommended her as a friend a few hours later.
>Speed of deployment usually isn't worth sacrificing correctness, performance, maintainability and security, if the choice is one or the other.
That statement is completely conditional. There are lots of situations where there is a significant first mover advantage in getting a product out early.